{"id":33242,"date":"2025-07-05T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T08:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=33242"},"modified":"2025-07-09T13:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T13:38:11","slug":"eagle-classics-fraser-of-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/07\/05\/eagle-classics-fraser-of-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Eagle Classics: Fraser of Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy George Beardmore<\/strong> & Frank Bellamy<\/strong> (Hawk Books -1990)
\nISBN: 978-0-94824-832-0 (Tabloid TPB)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced in less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

Frank Alfred Bellamy (21st<\/sup> May 1917 – 5th<\/sup> July 1976) is one of British Comics\u2019 greatest comics artists. In the all-too-brief years of his career he produced magnificent and unforgettable visuals for Eagle<\/strong>, TV21<\/strong>, Radio Times<\/strong> (Doctor Who<\/strong>) before graduating to The Daily Mirror<\/strong> newspaper strip Garth <\/strong>in 1971. He turned that long-running yet lacklustre adventure strip into a magnificent masterpiece of unmissable fantasy, with eye-popping, mind-blowing monochrome art other artists were proud to boast they swiped from. However, after only 17 stories, Bellamy died suddenly in 1976 and it\u2019s absolutely criminal that his work isn\u2019t in galleries, let alone in permanent collected book editions.<\/p>\n

Bellamy was born in 1917 but didn\u2019t begin comic strip work until 1953: a strip for Mickey Mouse Weekly<\/strong>. From there he moved on to Hulton Press and drew features starring the Swiss Family Robinson<\/em>, Robin Hood<\/em> and King Arthur<\/em> for Swift<\/strong> – the \u201cjunior companion\u201d to Eagle<\/strong>. In 1957, he moved on to the star title, producing standout, innovative work on a variety of strips, beginning with a biography\/hagiography of Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Happy Warrior\u2019<\/em> was followed by \u2018Montgomery of Alamein\u2019<\/em>, \u2018The Shepherd King – the story of David\u2019<\/em>, and \u2018The Travels of Marco Polo\u2019<\/em>, from which Bellamy was promptly pulled only a few months in. As Peter Jackson took over the back page historical adventure, Bellamy was on his way to the front cover and The Near Future.<\/p>\n

When Hulton were bought by Odhams Press there soon manifested irreconcilable differences between Frank Hampson and the new management. Dan Dare<\/strong>\u2019s creator left his superstar baby and Bellamy was tapped as replacement – although both Don Harley & Keith Watson were retained as his assistants. For a year Bellamy produced \u201cThe Pilot of the Future\u201d: redesigning the entire look of the strip at management\u2019s request, before joyfully stepping down to fulfil a lifetime\u2019s ambition.<\/p>\n

For his entire life Frank Bellamy had been fascinated – almost obsessed – with Africa. When asked if he would like to draw a big game hunter strip he didn\u2019t think twice. Fraser of Africa<\/strong> debuted in August 1960, a single page per week in the prestigious full-colour centre section. George Beardmore wrote three serials comprising the entire canon, starring Martin Fraser<\/em>, a rare individual working in modern day Tanganyika\u2019s game reserves.<\/p>\n

Bellamy again surpassed himself: consulting with the Hulton Press printers Bemrose over the colours he wanted to use and employing Kenyan farmers as fact & sense checkers to ensure he got everything just right. The result was a new colour palette that burned with the dry, yellow heat of the Veldt and delivered searing authenticity. The strip became the readers\u2019 favourite, knocking Dare from a position previously considered untouchable and unassailable.<\/p>\n

Fraser the character is a man out of time. Contrary to modern assumptions, the hunter loved animals, treated \u201cnatives\u201d as full equals and had a distinctly 21st<\/sup> century ecological bent. For a Britain blithely rife with institutionalized racism, cheerfully promoting bloodsports and still wondering what happened to The Empire, Fraser\u2019s startlingly \u201cPC\u201d (let\u2019s not say \u201cwoke\u201d and ruffle a few gammon feathers…) antics were a thrilling, exotic and salutary experience for us growing lads.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the high quality and intense drams of the serialised stories, Fraser of Africa<\/strong> is a primarily an artistic landmark. Bellamy\u2019s techniques of line and hatching, in conjunction with sensitive, atmospheric colours, even his staging and layout of pages – which would lead to the majestic Heros the Spartan<\/strong> and eventually the bravura creativity displayed in the Thunderbirds <\/strong>and Captain Scarlet<\/strong> strips for TV21<\/strong> – all were derived from the joyous stories of the Dark Continent.<\/p>\n

In case you still need convincing to seek this out the three tales appearing here are hopefully pretty self-explanatory, beginning with the recovery in bush of a lost American movie star in \u2018Lost Safari\u2019<\/em> (<\/em>Eagle <\/strong>Vol.11, #32-11:53 spanning August 6th<\/sup> 1960 through December 31st<\/sup> 1960, and Vol 12, #1-12 from January 4th<\/sup> 1961 to 28 January 1961). That segues neatly into \u2018The Ivory Poachers\u2019<\/em> (Eagle<\/strong> Vol.12, #5-12, 4th<\/sup> February to 20th<\/sup> May 1961) and a protracted campaign against callous Eurotrash butchering willy nilly across the endangered dwindling veldt.<\/p>\n

The saga ended with \u2018The Slavers\u2019<\/em> (Eagle<\/strong> Vol.12, #21-2:32 from 27th<\/sup> May to August 12th<\/sup> 1961) as Fraser aids Masai warriors targeted by Arab slavers…\"\"
\nYet another one to add to the \u201cWhy Is This Not In Print\u201d pile…
\nFraser of Africa \u00a91990 Fleetway Publications. Compilation \u00a9 1990 Hawk Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By George Beardmore & Frank Bellamy (Hawk Books -1990) ISBN: 978-0-94824-832-0 (Tabloid TPB) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. Frank Alfred Bellamy (21st May 1917 – 5th July 1976) is one of British Comics\u2019 greatest comics artists. In the all-too-brief years of his career he produced magnificent and unforgettable visuals for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Eagle Classics: Fraser of Africa”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[191,42,239,255,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-best-of-british","category-drama","category-environmentalism","category-nostalgia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8Ea","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33242"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33287,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33242\/revisions\/33287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}